Are You Gone Or Are You With Me?
by WaltzMatildah
Summary: Alex walks a thin line between pushing Lexie away and being completely terrified that she'll up and leave... An AU ending to season six and beginning to season seven.


**Are You Gone Or Are You With Me?**

by Waltzmatildah

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_Rain pours down over a city_

_Night has fallen like a stone._

_Are you gone or are you with me?_

_In my heart I'll never know_

.

He'd move his hands but they're dead weights by his sides. Her fingers are running laps through his hair and tears fall silently from her chin, land somewhere he can't quite tilt his head far enough to see.

A machine force feeds him oxygen and he's three quarters to convinced his ribcage is about to crack right open.

He shuts his eyes against the agony and pretends like he has some semblance of control.

Convinces no-one.

Fades back in the direction he just came from.

.

.

.

Next time.

Hours. Minutes. Days. He can't be sure.

Soft restraints circle aching wrists.

A tube is still jammed between his teeth.

The room is empty save for an incessant beeping high above him and somewhere to the left.

He thinks he might be sick.

Bucks to no avail against the cuffs that keep him in place. Ramps up the beeping and adds a piercing wail and panicked shouts to the cacophony that threatens to drown him.

Almost relishes the moment when it does.

.

.

.

Black. White. Shades of in-between grey.

The restraints are gone. He can still feel them nonetheless. Ghosts that lock him in place.

Fingers twist into his and he shakes them loose.

_Don't touch me..._

They fall away and some of the horror falls with it.

.

.

.

It's not as bad this time. Waking up.

Slow and sure.

Warm.

For a while.

He remembers the tube coming out. Going back in again. Remembers the telling warning signal of oxygen sats that refused to hold. Of air sawed through lungs, sponge-wet and burning. Of begging without words and pleading with tears that he'll never forgive himself for.

Knows it all came to nothing in the end.

_Just another twenty four hours..._

Hollow words when time has lost all sense of meaning.

.

.

.

She's covered up. Head to toe in scrubs and a face mask. The top of it is tear-stained. A dark, damp blue, and he blinks but can't make any of it go away.

She's got a gloved hand wrapped around his bicep and he thinks he might just up and float away if she lets him go; if she loosens her grip just an inch. Whispered hiccups spell out his prognosis and he'd laugh if he had the energy.

A bullet is nothing apparently. A mere bump in an already rocky road. Post operative pneumonia might dictate a different story.

Both lungs. Wham, bam.

He fights to find her fingers with his. Holds on to her as her eyes slide to shut. Tight.

_Please don't leave me, I don't want you here, please don't leave me, I don't want you here..._

A paradox of sorts.

Figures both might just be the truth.

.

.

.

She never leaves. She's gone. Some of the time she's gone.

But she never leaves.

And he can't quite reconcile the fact that he thinks she should with the overwhelming fear that he'll completely dissolve if she ever actually does.

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.

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He gets visitors. Every now and then. Some are more surprising than others.

Meredith. Cristina. Mark. April. He thinks even the Chief at one point.

He pretends to sleep because it's easier all round. For them and for him.

_"Alex Karev, I swear to God..."_

Bailey tears him all to undone and fraying. Little pieces of what's left that crumble to the floor and cling to the soles of her shoes. Get tracked across the sterile tile and back out of the room as she leaves again.

He doesn't know what to say to her. Has _nothing_ to say to her.

That she seems to expect little else from him is so much a part of the problem.

.

.

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It's seven days before he can mumble out more than three words at a time and not wonder if he is going to vomit up a lung or two in the process.

She pretends to read journal articles while he pretends being awake is not an exhausting exercise that leaves him perilously on the brink.

Their inevitable unravelling has begun.

The desperate race to the finish line is well and truly on.

He figures he has genetics on his side and sends her silent commands to get out while she still can. Can't quite bring himself to say the words aloud lest she do exactly that.

It wouldn't be the first time he's given someone an out.

And lost.

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The eight steps between his bed and the adjoining bathroom might as well be a marathon. He's dizzy and breathless and inches from vomiting at his own feet by the time he crosses the distance.

Almost forgets why he was headed there in the first place as she closes the lid of the toilet and drags him down onto it.

Hold his face in her hands and smoothes away sweat and countless other salty substances he can't quite bring himself to name.

Eyes on his fingers. He doesn't look at her.

_Can't._

All his life he's been primed to need escape routes.

And now it feels like she's standing in front of them all.

.

.

.

They get three quarters to the exit when he jams his palms against the rubber wheels of the chair they're forcing him to use.

It's been ten days and it's probably too soon but she knows as well as he does that this is it. That this _has_ to be it.

He pushes upright and wraps an arm around his ribs. Mostly phantom pain now but still a bone jarring agony nonetheless. She sighs heavily. He imagines hands thrown skyward in expansive exasperation.

Doesn't quite have the words to explain why he _needs_ to do this by himself.

Doesn't quite have the words for much of anything these days.

.

.

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They fight.

She slams doors while he refuses meds that only make him drowsy and disoriented. And he's so _angry_ with himself most of the time that he can hardly sit still.

The house becomes an extension of the hospital ward he came to loathe and he can barely make it from the kitchen to his bedroom without black spots peppering his peripheral vision. He feels like a pathetic caricature of the person he thinks he might once have been and can't for the life of him figure out why she's still right there.

On the other side of the bathroom door.

Crying softly and begging him to open up.

He does. Eventually. And she latches on to his side. Wraps her tiny arms around him tight and pushes all the dislodged pieces back into something resembling a tentative order.

_I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..._

The words clog up the back of his throat. Breathing around them is impossible.

And it all feels like his natural state.

Three steps away and losing ground fast.

.

.

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She has nightmares. Wakes up screaming; ghost white and terrified.

But so does he and so he is not one to judge.

.

.

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He doesn't ask and she doesn't offer.

An unspoken agreement of sorts.

He remembers snatches. Mostly dead eyes that fail to blink back and the acrid stench of blood.

His own. _Hers_.

There's more. He doesn't ask and she doesn't offer but the evidence is written in the hunched curve of her spine. In the rapid twitch of her perpetually pink eyes.

In the way that she twists her legs through his like a vice before she'll relax enough to contemplate sleep.

In the way that she still doesn't quite manage to actually get any.

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He waits 'til the house has emptied out before setting both feet on the floor beside his bed. Rubs stubbornly at the bone numbing exhaustion that tugs his eyelids to half mast.

Thirty minutes later and his keys are still wherever his housemates have hidden them. He contemplates jogging in but when the very thought of heading back upstairs to change is enough to have him near tears he slumps to seated on the couch instead. Loses himself in the white noise between channels and doesn't move for nine hours.

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.

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Meredith plays messenger for The Chief. A twisted game of Chinese Whispers that ends in an instruction that forbids him to set foot in the hospital as anything other than a surgical outpatient for another ten days.

At least.

Maybe fourteen. In the end it will be Altman's call.

He flashes wide, white teeth at her as she runs gloved fingertips against scar tissue that he still can't quite bring himself to look at. Keeps his eyes on her lips as they purse over cloudy scans that betray his forced cheer.

"You still taking the antibiotics?" Her brows furrowed as she looks up at him for confirmation.

He nods out a definite _yes_, doesn't bother to mention the fact that his repeat ran out three days ago. Figures if he still had the pills he'd be taking them so it's not a complete lie.

Or something.

.

.

.

He tells Lexie he can go back at the end of the week. Waits until her mouth is full of coffee or toast crust or cereal and drops the news into her lap without warning. Cuts off her doubts and disbelief with a shrug and a smirk and an _Altman said it's fine._

Desperately counts on her not calling the cardiac attending to double check.

Drags her back up the stairs, two and three at a time, in an attempt to prove just how ready he is.

Like surgery and sex are somehow intricately entwined.

Uses the twist of his tongue against her lips to tell her all the truths that he can't quite bring himself to voice out loud.

_I'm scared and I can't stop lying to you._

.

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Deep breath; exhale.

_I think I might love you._

_I'm so sorry..._

.

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_Nothing good can come from this..._

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He spends his first morning back hiding in the clinic. Hiding from Altman. Hiding from Lexie. Hiding from everyone and anyone who might know him.

Doesn't stop the ones that don't from pointing and staring from the moment he steps through the double sliding doors.

He can do stitches in his sleep. Spends hours pressing skin back together. Looping neat surgical ties through torn and jagged flesh and resolutely not thinking about the train line of tracks that once zipped his own insides up.

In the end there are more surgeons than other doctors hiding out in the clinic. A refuge. A safe place to escape from the hospital appointed shrink that has been called in to declare them fit to operate.

Or not.

As the case may be.

And for several split seconds it all feels a little bit like _normal_.

Until it doesn't...

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Her lips are moving. That much he can tell. And her eyes are wide and unblinking and everyone around them has stilled to a mirrored tableau of one another.

He steps towards her. Two feet. Three. Static switches to loud, the distance between the two of them suddenly insurmountable. He's dizzy. Can't quite figure out if he needs to head right or left.

In the end he does neither. Opens his mouth and lets words he immediately forgets to roll off his tongue and across the linoleum floor, come to a rest at the feet of Sloan or Shepherd or Owen Hunt.

He's going to be sick. Her eyes are all wide and white in her head and he's going to be sick.

Back tracks, pushes through a door that leads to outside.

To _out_.

Dry heaves as his fingernails collect the solid earth that rocks beneath his palms. Unsteady and off kilter.

Waits for the horizon to right itself again.

Gives up at seven minutes and thirteen seconds.

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He hates that he's made this all about him. Hates himself for his complete inability to see it as anything but his own damn fault. Like he's God. Or The Chief.

Like he's Gary Clark.

Dials Meredith's cell and hangs up again before the call can switch through to voice mail. Knows without needing to try that he no longer has the air required for words.

Makes his way silently up staircases and along hallways instead.

_Department of Psychological Medicine._

DPM for short. All innocuous sounding if you don't know the lingo.

_In-patients ward._

He scrubs soil blackened fingertips against his eyelids and presses the heavy door open with his shoulder. Sinks to seated on a chair in the visitor's lounge and waits.

Waits.

For what, he has no clue.

No freaking clue.

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He wakes up with a throbbing pain in his chest and a headache that echoes all the way to his back teeth. Jerks to upright and standing with an altitude shifting speed that almost sends him to his knees as the world fades to pink and pale, pale blue.

"Alex?"

He thinks he mumbles back a reply. An answer to a question he doesn't quite understand, but he can't be sure and the insistent voice continues to pound at his sides.

_"Karev?"_

_"Alex?"_

_"Hey, are you okay?"_

He's pushed back into the chair he'd expended so much energy launching himself up from as vaguely familiar fingers press against the pulse point in his neck. He doesn't need to count to ten to know what they'll find as his whole body rocks to the speeding beat.

_"Jesus."_

Ice cold water splashes at his lips. Drips down his front. Stains his scrubs an immediate dark blue. The pattern like blood splatter against his chest.

Again.

He laughs then. Gagging, gulping breaths that get stuck behind his tonsils and whistle out around teeth that are slammed to shut and grinding.

Wonders how much it'll take to book himself the room next door to hers.

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He sits opposite Meredith. There's a bed between them. Occupied. He can't quite bring himself to look too closely. She's flat on her stomach, face directed away from him. He can stare at the ends of her pony tail and not have to worry about being caught out when the image blurs to blood red and black.

She's sleeping the sleep of the dead.

And he's jealous.

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Sandwiches are delivered. Stale coffee that loses its heat over the course of the minutes and hours that it is left discarded at finger-tips reach.

Bite. Chew. Swallow.

He gags on a lump of crust that refuses to go down. Coughs until the phantom pain in his chest is more real than he thinks it has ever been in the past. On fire and drowning all at once and it's not until he's three quarters to losing his shit completely that fingers wrap around his wrist.

Tight.

"Alex?"

He drags in a wet sounding breath and shoves the heel of his other hand into the corresponding eye socket.

Pushes. Pushes. Pushes.

"Alex? What's going on with you?"

He reaches out blindly. Wraps his own fingers through Lexie's lax ones, holds on for dear life and tries not to laugh.

Doubts, once started, he'd ever be able to stop.

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Derek drives him home. It's the middle of the night and Meredith has threatened him with all manner of unspeakable things if he doesn't go and sleep in his own bed for at least eight hours.

He stumbles around indignant protests that involve hand gestures and borderline temper tantrums for a minute or several, but he barely has the energy to sit upright in the chair he's collapsed into and so the words fizzle out with barely a muted whimper in the end.

He jerks to awake when the engine cuts out. Slams his head against the side window and takes more time than he should ever need to figure out where the fuck he is.

"Karev?"

The pity laced through the two syllables makes him want to punch his perpetually balled fist through something shattered and splintering.

He brings his palms up instead, a show of surrender. An _I'm alright_ that requires no words.

After all, he'd need air for those...

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He dreams of blood and brain matter. It flows in rivers down hallways and across floor tiles. Coats his trembling fingers 'til they're glove-like and slipping as he tries to plug the hole in her forehead.

Fails to save her life.

Every time.

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He hitches a lift back into the hospital with Jackson and April the next morning. Foregoes coffee and cereal for seven extra minutes of solitude.

It's been three and a half hours since Derek delivered him home. He's barely managed a shower and a shave but he has made a trip around their room, shoved items into a plastic bag that he thinks she might want when she wakes up.

The book he vaguely remembers she's reading. An old Harvard t-shirt that she sleeps in just to tease him. Mouthwash. Cherry lip-gloss. Underwear. Thick socks. Her feet are always fucking freezing.

And he's done this so many times in the past that you'd think he'd be better at it by now...

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April and Jackson both stare at him through lowered lashes the whole way in. As though waiting for the other shoe to drop.

For him to snap and snatch at the wheel. To drive them off a bridge or into the thick trunk of a tree.

He pulls his cell from his pocket and taps out a message to Meredith instead.

_On my way..._

Counts in threes with his breath held for her reply to arrive. Braces himself for the inevitable.

_Chai latte. And a banana muffin. She's still sleeping... See you soon._

It's not what he's expecting and the relief brings sudden tears to his eyes.

Because she gets it.

She gets _him_.

And she wants a banana muffin. He can damn well bring her a banana muffin.

.

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The plastic bag swings heavily against his left knee. He feels somewhat ashamed of its contents. Of the motivations and unspeakable emotions behind his far from arbitrary selections. He wishes suddenly that he'd thought to put everything into something a little nicer than the grocery store sack he'd found on the kitchen table. In the end he slides the lot into the bottom drawer of the chest that sits in the corner of her private room.

Figures she doesn't need any of it while she's still sleeping anyway, and making a big deal out of it now will serve no purpose.

And so he steps back out into the deserted hall to wait.

It seems he's done a lot of that lately... waiting.

To die. To wake up. For everything to come to a halting stop.

Continues to tick away the seconds, minutes, hours that pass. That bring it all that little bit closer.

.

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Meredith materialises from the bathroom opposite. Looks every bit as shattered as he feels.

"Morning." He cuts off the protest to his arrival he was expecting in the previous text message by thrusting out the banana muffin he'd procured from the coffee cart by the entrance.

She lets her mouth fall open nonetheless. Seems to deflate before she can get the words to even half way out.

"Morning, Alex." The exasperated reply little more than a half-hearted sigh. "Did you sleep at all?"

And he hates that, to some degree, this is still all about him.

Shrugs out a non-reply and turns his back.

.

.

.

The room is stifling. Keeping his eyelids open is becoming more and more difficult as the hours tick past. He watches clear liquid snake its way down the IV tubing and disappear into the back of her hand. The drip, drip, drip provides a comforting form of monotony and he blinks along with the inherent beat.

He feels oddly nauseous, light headed, puts it down to the fact that food hasn't really been at the top of his list of priorities lately. At least, not above desperately keeping hold of some semblance of sanity. And his non-girlfriend girlfriend that appears to have completely lost all sense of hers.

He coughs into his fist. Gravelly and wet. In his peripheral vision he sees Meredith's hand twitch as she shifts in her sleep. Twisted as she is into an armchair of sorts. Lexie doesn't so much as budge and he's glad for their continued slumber.

Figures if they don't know he feels like crap then it's one less thing he has to explain away.

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A cough from the doorway cuts off the latest round of blood and gore that waits until he's sleeping to creep up on him, tearing at defences that haven't quite been re-scaffolded.

He startles to upright in his chair, the clumsy movement becoming as familiar to him as breathing.

"Karev?"

Bailey.

_Shit._

He shifts his gaze between the doorway and where Meredith has her eyebrows raised in his direction expectantly. Waits for her to intervene even as he knows she's not going to.

"Yeah?"

"You're with me." A statement of fact. Not a question. Meredith shrugs, like the whole thing is perfectly obvious to everyone but him. He gets to his feet gingerly. Stiff and sore from sitting in the one position for so long but no where near stupid enough to make it obvious.

He follows along a step and a half behind her. The good little sheep he never really managed to be for anyone but her. And not even her most of the time. She keeps turning back, like she doesn't trust him to keep up. He does but only because disobedience would require independent thought and he's so far beyond that right now he can't even remember what it feels like.

She pushes through the front doors to the relatively quiet clinic and motions him down onto one of the beds. Draws the curtains around them forcefully while he watches. Confused.

"Take your top off."

It's not the first time she's said that to him. The comical retorts die before they're even half way to fully formed.

"Excuse me?"

"I can do it here or I can do it in the OR. Take your top off. The bullet comes out now." She turns her back. Fiddles with an instrument tray. The metallic clang of scalpel on kidney dish is enough to grey the edges of his peripheral vision.

He gets up and walks out then.

Doesn't look back.

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Joe's isn't open. He pushes three times at the heavy wooden door before a glance at his watch tells him the clock is yet to strike midday. He turns until his back is against the entrance and slides down the smooth surface, wraps his arms around his shins tightly and wonders how long it'll take for him to disappear completely into the cold concrete below.

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In the end he walks home. To Meredith's. To the closest approximation of home he's ever really known. There are photos tacked to a cork board in the kitchen. The images captured there seem like a lifetime ago. And, for some, they are.

He makes coffee, let's it go cold and untouched. Waits for the sun to sink slowly below the lip of the window ledge and plunge him into shadow. Clutches at the ethereal fingers of ghosts that keep him company when no one else will.

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He doesn't go back.

Can't bring himself to admit yet another stinging defeat. Let's Meredith pick up the not so insignificant pieces of a girl he knows he shattered into one million slivered shards.

Finds it blood numbing that he didn't even need a chamber of bullets to do it. Genetically programmed as he is to self destruct and take out everything else in his path.

Her broken edges moulded into the shape of his balled fist.

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She is furious with him when she finally comes home. And rightfully so. He relishes the anger with a fervor that is all encompassing. Presses at buttons that are achingly familiar and accepts the inevitable sting that follows.

Apologises repeatedly for things she doesn't even know he has done.

He's ninety nine percent to convinced that Meredith is angry with him too. But her buttons are more difficult to find. Need hitting a little harder to draw any kind of reaction.

And so he sleeps in an on-call room, heaves his aching body up staircase after staircase after endless staircase and figures he'll just avoid her until she forgets.

Or finds something new to hate him for.

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He drinks a milkshake in the supply closet where Reed's brains leaked from the hole in the back of her skull. Has a decidedly macabre conversation with her about the difference between _thinking_ you're dead and actually _being_ dead.

It is surprisingly enlightening. If a little one-sided.

A string of hospital staff sidle past him without so much as a sideways glance. And they giggle at that, him and Reed. At the fact that something as absurd as a doctor having lunch with a dead girl is not the most ridiculous thing to have happened in this room.

Not even close.

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"What are you doing?"

The voice is behind him, in the doorway to his bedroom. He doesn't need to look up to know who it belongs to. _Meredith_.

"Sleeping."

He's not. But he uses just the right amount of rumble to be convincing.

Or so he thought. The end of the bed sinks a inch or several as her weight settles heavily against his ankle.

"Alex, what are you doing?"

He doesn't bother to answer. Can't give her what she wants and he's already told too many lies.

"Alex."

He wins then. He can tell by the sigh that surrounds the consonants and vowels that make up his name. She's giving up this round. At least, for now.

"Mark was there." Almost like an apology. "When she woke up, Mark was the only one there. You should probably know that."

And yet somehow she still manages to take all the points.

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.

He loses track of the days, hours, weeks that slip by. They exchange minimal words across burnt toast and coffee and cross paths occasionally on the back staircase that no one besides them really uses.

He wants to shout at her that it's pathetic she's avoiding the elevators too. After all, it wasn't her blood that slid soundlessly between the gaps and it wasn't her self respect that pooled in the dusty metal corners.

But while it might not have been her blood and it might not have been her self respect, it was most definitely his fault.

And so he says nothing.

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.

.

He's not expecting it when she finally confronts him. Convinced as he is that she's well and truly moved on. Revels in the idea as evenly as he longs to twist his fingers in hers and never let go.

"I told you that I loved you."

His shirt is over his head and he can't see her and for a moment he panics. Struggles to free himself from the thick cotton and has to bite his own tongue to stop from freaking the fuck out.

Again.

Finally untangled he spins to face her. Collides his left shoulder heavily with the open wardrobe door and flinches as a fork of lightening sparks through his insides.

Concern white washes her face for a fleeting moment before the thunder clouds return.

"I told you that I loved you. And I pretended to be Izzie for you and..."

She's crying. He's not entirely convinced she knows this.

"I stayed with you. Every moment you were in the hospital I stayed with you and-"

"I'm sorry-"

_"Stop apologising for everything!"_ There is the tentative edge of a shriek in her reply and he takes a step back. "I did all that because I _wanted_ to. Because I thought I _loved_ you."

"I..." He can feel the bed behind his knees. Knows that one more step back will have him sprawled across its surface. He feels cornered and at a loss to understand what is meant to happen next. What she is expecting from him.

The repeated apology she doesn't want dies on his lips.

"Don't say it. Don't say you're sorry. Don't say you never loved me back."

She moves then, takes an incongruous step away before throwing something at his chest. Sledgehammer hard. He doesn't catch it. Allows the weight to drop noisily at his feet.

He knows what it is.

"Don't say it because I won't believe you."

It's the bag of carefully selected belongings he stowed deep in the dresser drawer of her hospital room.

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.

"Alex?"

There is no air in his lungs. None. And he thinks that fact is irrelevant because his muscles have forgotten how to expand and contract anyhow.

He can feel his mouth opening and closing soundlessly. Can hear the breathy giggle of Reed's laughter swell in the deep recesses of his brain. She'd warned him this would happen. Over halfheartedly polished apples and iridescent, lime milkshakes she'd warned him it would all come crashing down.

_It's oddly inevitable, don't you think, Alex?_

He'd told her to shut the hell up.

"Alex?"

He can see where the sleeve of her Harvard tee has slipped out from the plastic. It still looks folded. Like it hasn't been moved since he slid it carefully into place beneath everything else he'd packed for her.

He still can't look at her.

"Meredith told me."

Of course she did.

"Told you what?" The words are little more than a bark. Leech from the back of his throat before he can really process what speaking right now is going to achieve.

"Everything."

A whisper. Little more.

"She should have-" He stops. _Kept her big mouth shut._ It's too late now for blame.

And none of this was ever Meredith's fault.

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There is a commotion downstairs. The front door opens. Closes again amid a cacophony of raised voices and careless laughter. They both flinch against the sudden interruption.

She steps into his room. Pushes the door closed quietly behind her. A stark contrast to the glass shattering slam that had broken the spell between them only split seconds earlier.

He sinks back onto the bed. Relinquishes any semblance of control over the situation.

All he thought he'd held 'til now had been nothing more than illusion anyhow.

"Lexie..."

His face is in his hands. Fingers scrubbing desperately against stubble he'd not bothered to remove for days now. He can feel the bed shift as she slides to seated next to him. Close enough that her shoulder skims his upper arm.

"I don't get it."

He shrugs absently. Because he's spent _months_ analysing it all and he's not even _close_ to having it straight inside his own head.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

He shrugs again, but couples the movement with the one sentence he _is_ sure of. "I thought you'd be better off without me."

The admission tumbles onto the carpet at their feet. He scuffs his toes at the words, wishes he could erase them as easily as he'd let them spill.

"Oh, Alex..."

Her fingers twitch. They're curled lazily in her lap.

But then they're not.

They're twisting insistently through his instead. Kneading at the slack skin that covers the back of his hand.

They've been here before. Side by side on this bed. And he can't help but wonder whether this ending will be any different.

For the first time in a long time almost hopes that it will be exactly the same.

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The End


End file.
